Thinking: Different kinds of writing

During this semester we have been engaged in journalling and academic writing but right from the beginning of this project I wondered whether I might try different genres. But what?

One of my interests is poetry. Since the 1970s I’ve dabbled with the Japanese poetry form, haiku, which is traditionally linked to the natural environment. More recently I’ve developed a passion for Pablo Neruda’s poetry, particularly his odes to places and things. This has led me to create visual odes to places and food that I love.

And so, as I began to think about edge I made a list of all the things I could think of and then looked in the dictionary and Thesaurus in search for words and ideas that I might have missed (see my earlier post). I ended up with an unwieldy list. Then, on 11/4/18, I decided to have a go at writing a poem to convey what I’d been thinking about. I have constantly reworked it since the first draft and it is still very much a work in progress but I thought I'd take the plunge and post it to my blog. 

In my mind’s eye (as I begin) I wonder. Edge might be

Something shaped by discovery, memory, imagination

A place, space, emotion or idea

Something solid, maybe abstract

A barrier, fence, boundary
(sounds like)
‘Halt! Who goes there?’ 
‘Passport please!’
‘Turn back!’
(looks like)
‘Trespassers Prosecuted’
‘Private Property’
’Do not enter’

A constraint shaped by frame, wall, page, enclosure

An ending and a beginning

A meeting, move or change
From one thing to another
A new country
A new materiality
A new possibility
A new physicality
A new sensibility
A new colour
A new texture

I might be on the verge of something new

A fixed point or something moveable

Certainty and mixture
Something negative and something positive
Something sharp and hard, soft and complex

The limit
An entry and an exit
A view to the distance, a lookout

A place of danger and risk

A shift(ing)
Politics
Culture
History (dividing, connecting – past, present and future)
A moment in time

Science

A light shining through

People blocked, seeking, skirting the margins

A feeling about the future
Of desperation,
Being on the brink
A feeling of optimism

A sadness in leaving and a ray of hope

And then I realise that sometimes there isn’t an edge at all.

I don’t know enough about poetry to be able to analyse what I’ve created (I know it’s neither haiku or ode and it’s not very good!) but I think I want to find a way of developing this very rough beginning. I just have to work out how! Maybe a workshop or short course? Or maybe a poet mentor?

Whether this is a good or bad poem isn’t really the point now. It has turned out to be a device that I have returned to often. As I’m thinking things through the activity focuses my mind on the idea of edge and helps me to check my assumptions, to make connections and distinctions. Maybe by the end of my project I’ll have one poem that I’m happy with. That would be good!

Following another thread, I’ve also made a list of ideas and words that might trigger another kind of writing – snippets of prose. Here my inspiration comes from Teju Cole’s Blind Spot. This wonderful book comprises a selection of Cole’s photographs which are linked to short pieces of prose and associated with places around the world. From where I stand, they often connect to my thinking about edge... 

AUCKLAND
Tane and his siblings conspire to push apart their mother, Papatuanuku, the earth, and father, Ranginui, the sky. In the space forced between the two is the light of the world. The light falls and flows between two eyelids. (Cole, 2016a, p10)

In my own way, I might give this a try too! It might give me a chance to document my fleeting thoughts about edge and they might find a place in future work.